Women in Leisure - network launched

After many years of discussing it, we've finally established a network for women working in the leisure sector. Our first step has been to create a group called Women in Leisure on LinkedIn, and we already have almost 100 members and some discussions and sharing of news has started.

Hoping this will progress further in the future, with a charity lunch planned for early in 2010.

Using Doodle For Making Arrangements

Discovered this great free tool for arranging meetings and taking polls. It's called Doodle and we've been using it for arranging meetings internally. You get to ask a question (what's the best date to meet for the family celebration at Christmas would be just one example I'll be using soon), invite participants by adding their emails and then sit back and see which dates they choose.

Simple and professional, gets a bit thumbs up from Promote!

‘Freemium’ the future for your business online?

I have just finished reading Chris Anderson’s brilliant new book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price”. Chris Anderson is the editor of Wired and the author of the 2006 bestseller “The Long Tail”. In Free he outlines how techno­logy has tur­ned “free” from a mar­ke­ting trick into a new eco­no­mic model.

The book examines the economics of ‘free’ and the busi­ness models built around it, contrasting 20th Cen­tury Free (it’s free, but you end up paying for it anyway) with 21st Cen­tury Free (somebody’s paying, but it’s pro­bably not you) and finally introduces “Freemium” (free + premium), which he thinks is the first really new busi­ness model of the web and the future of Free online.

Freemium sees companies gives away 95% of their online ‘stuff’ to customers for free, whilst subsidising this with the 5% of customers willing to pay for a premium version of the product or service.

It’s all really thought provoking right from the start, where Anderson summarises technological trends and the fact that the cost of the building blocks of all electronic activity – storage, processing, and bandwidth – have fallen so far that the actual cost approaches zero.
Free stuff is spreading because of one fundamental difference between the bricks-and-mortar world (which Anderson calls the world of atoms) and the digital world (which he calls the world of bits). In the world of atoms, each item is expensive to produce and distribute; in the world of bits, it costs close to nothing. Generation Y understand this and therefore resent paying for anything that ultimately costs nothing to produce.

One of his strongest arguments is in this digital age there is unstoppable downward pressure on the prices of all things “made of ideas.” A real wake up call for hundreds of industries including music, entertainment, education, photography, journalism, computer software and of course, the encyclopaedia business!

“In the digital realm you can try to keep Free at bay with laws and locks, but eventually the force of economic gravity will win.”

In keeping with the theme ... here's a free download of the book.

How to get more people using stairs...

Superb viral on YouTube.

Advertising agency DDB and Volkswagen teamed up for an experiment they called the 'Fun Theory', in an ambitious attempt to try and change people's behavior in Sweden.

The transformation of subway stairs into a piano increased stair use by 66%.

Perhaps we should set try the same in London to get people using the stairs on the Tube.

Brilliant summary of social media

If you had any doubts about the importance of social media, just spend the next 5 minutes watching this brilliant video. Definitely one I will be using for the opening of my presentations in the future.

Facebook team up with Sport England

Interesting to hear more about the partnership between Sport England and Facebook - the first long term partnership between Facebook and a public body in the UK.

The deal is said to be worth up to £20 million and aims to contribute to the delivery of the Olympic legacy from 2012 - more people playing sport.

By using the social networking site’s influence Sport England hopes to bring people together and transform the way sports bodies relate to the public.

There will be a Facebook ‘Sport Hub’, which will enable NGBs to engage with over 20 million people who use Facebook in the UK. This 'hub' will feel like a Facebook fan page, but will also feature innovative new applications enabling sports bodies and teams to organise and market sports events.

Users will also be able to challenge people in their area to compete against them and then share the results across their networks.

Facebook is to provide an in-kind investment of £5 million a year until March 2013, which will cover the development of the ‘Sport Hub’, as well as pound-for-pound matched advertising spend on Facebook for brands and NGBs to use Facebook ads to encourage people to play more sport.

Students and young people who use Facebook will be the first to benefit - starting at this year’s university freshers’ week. Sport England is piloting the scheme through British Universities & Colleges Sport and six sports. The pilot has an ambitious target to get 12,000 students participating in sport in just four months.

Get on Your Bike

This summer's holiday in South West France with the family saw us enjoying the incredible cycle path network. Miles and miles of superb, wide, flat cycle paths, made cycling a real pleasure for all ages and a result we piled on the miles and rather than the pounds as we kept active enough to relax and enjoy the delicious french food on offer.

It was with more interest that usual then that attended a session on 'Active Transport' at the BASES Annual Conference last week. Professor Jim McKenna, Adrian Davies, Dr Ashley Cooper and Andy Smith gave an enlightening summary of why our nation is so poor when it comes to travelling anywhere by bike and what's being done in some areas to combat this.

Dr Cooper gave some frightening statistics for the UK in comparison to other European nations. A tiny proportion of British school children cycle to school, yet in Denmark over 65% of 15 year old boys cycle.

His PEACH Project analyses children's activty patterns on the way to and from school. It turns out that Year 10 Girls that cycle to and from school are SIX times more likely to meet the government's daily activity targets. Other research from Derby seems to be indicating the same - it's not just the cycling, but once kids or adults have been active on their journey, they are more likely to be active at other times in the day too.

The UK government in the 1960's chose to mirror the US and focus on car ownership as am indication of 'progress', with massive investment in building roads and motorways. Elsewhere in Europe it seems there was a more balanced approach and the infrastructure for cycling was established.

It appears the habits of decades will be incredibly tough to reverse as experts and charities in this area desperately try to encourage the car loving British public to jump on a bike rather than getting in the car for even the shortest of journeys.